When traders embark on their technical analysis training voyage, they usually believe that the challenge will be to learn a lot of technical tools. And they usually seek out who they believe to be an "expert."However the idea is to develop your own way of looking at the market, and to get comfortable with this vision, and with the patterns which you see, and to learn to identify them and to get comfortable with them so that you can repeat them over and over again.The most important part of technical analysis training is really personal self-study and building personal awareness.But whether you learn enough of another's vision or if you create your own from scratch, you can become comfortable with them to the exclusion of all others, and so you can follow your understanding wherever it leads, without listening to other voices and other inputs.To become a really good trader you have to learn how to isolate yourself from outside influences. Remember that the world is reacting to energy terminations, and that the crowd of people will be at extremes when you are preparing to take action in the opposite direction. This means that you must be in a mental state such that you are able to do things that most people will not do, because they are afraid to act against the crowd, or they are unable to see the alternate course of action because they are asleep, and unaware of the reality of the market action that is unfolding. In our view the key to this optimal mental state is awareness + monitoring + -observing, and it is a specific and learnable talent.Let us talk about the nature of probability, and its relationship to technical analysis training, and how to go about conducting research, and the need for such research, and the value it has for us as traders in terms of our financial outcomes.The tools of technical analysis can be so accurate that it sometimes seems as if they are infallible. Some beginning traders start to think that every support will hold, and every trend termination is the time to jump in. Of course life is not that simple. If the market could be completely and accurately predicted in advance there would be no market, and computers could figure it all out. There would be no difference of opinion between buyers and sellers, and there would be no winners and losers and everyone would have the same amount of money. The market is infinitely complex and has the ability to do anything. It is pure in its simplicity, and the major difficulty is that our perception and interpretation is fallible.Most people only rarely have sufficient awareness to note this simplicity, since our perceptions are usually clouded with various preconceptions and influences. But patterns do exist, and some of these patterns have a high potential for repeating themselves, since energy can and does repeat itself. The trick is learning how to tell when a pattern is holding, and how to tell when it is not holding. And furthermore, to learn how often a pattern will hold or break when viewed in a large sample size. The tools are accurate and effective -- but on a percentage basis. The odds are on our side, not the guarantee of success on any single trade.The true key to technical analysis training is to do your personal research carefully so that you understand how the patterns that you see will act when considered n a large sample size.